Go Down Knowing
by Lasciate
Summary: When all you trust is the fact that everyone is crazy, what does a war matter anyway?


With all the fog in the air, Draco's amazed that he can breathe at all; that the sagging clouds aren't simply the next curse he's going to taste on his tongue until he dies. Foolish things come to his mind, high up in the turrets of a castle he knows better than his own body. Draco thinks about what it felt like to bow to a Hippogryph; he remembers the dirt and sod in his mouth the first time he fell from his broom, the scent of Quidditch leathers all around him; his first nightmare. Clouds form the images in front of him, shaped out of the mist gathering at the tip of his wand and dying just as quickly. Soon, he knows, he will be like the wisps of air dying at the tip of a wand, but for now, he is the creator and destroyer of something both vast and easily dismissed.

Once, when he was little enough that he probably only dreamt these memories, his mother laughed at something he'd said, and he knew he would always be "a mommy's boy". Later, after school rivalries meant spilling blood more than insults, he came to the realization that this hurt Potter more than it hurt him. At least he had a mum. His wand flicks sharply to the right, creating the image of his mother with Potter desperately begging at the hem of her robe, then dispels it more quickly than any of the others, parchment white.

"What was the point of all this", he asks himself when the sound of spell casting drowns out the explosions of his heart, chasing him through the underbrush of the Forbidden Forest night after night—he searches endlessly, as Harry asked him to, but he still wonders...

More than half their class is dead by now, _Confunded_ into suicide or hanging, broken from trees around the grounds, he hasn't kept track, hasn't had time to breathe, think, eat, sleep, cry. Harry's demand become more terrifying with each day that passes, and Draco knows, he _knows_, that one day Harry will ask him to put a wand to his throat and...black. That's all Draco sees past that point. What _was_ the point? If all this sneaking around and nearly dying was only leading him towards a singular goal, then why didn't he just take the easier, straight path? Harry certainly wouldn't stop him. His friends might have, but, then again, who knows how unraveled they'd be if they had survived this long. Eight years of Hogwarts imprisonment. Eight years eating spell-frozen house elves and rats, with just a handful of half-educated wizards who had only been young until they'd met Harry Potter, and that's how a hero became the second most hated person in the world. By existing, and having the gall to be good at not getting killed.

Draco suddenly rounds on his goal, a simple little card with Dumbledor's image frozen horribly still on its front, the magic gone from the simple trading card. Draco had had the largest collection of Dumbledore cards out of anyone in the school, not that he'd been willing to tell a soul. Harry found out, but that was hardly the same thing—he had a knack for finding secrets.

Even now, Dumbledore's eyes gleam from their papery coffin, and Draco doesn't pick up the portkey right away. He's not sure it's the right thing. He's only just begun to think it should matter; right and wrong, good and evil, kind or cruel are new ideals for him, and he can tell by the look in Harry's eyes that he gets it wrong more than he ever gets it right, but effort counts to do-gooders. This time though, he knows that Harry's judgment is the questionable one, not his, which makes it everything even harder. Harry will die without him.

Harry will die no matter what.

The fog down on the ground is barely perceptible, especially when shrouded so cleanly by darkness, and tree shadow, and the fireworks of his enemy gaining on him. The card at his feet doesn't glitter, its shiny surface worn to a matte finish, just like Harry, just like him, and he doesn't know if it's the right thing to save himself, even if Harry told him to. What's the point? Why survive to have a life without his friends; without an education; with a past the size of the universe hovering like a net over him for the rest of his days. War builds nothing in men but a need to survive pointlessly and the apathy to accomplish that task. Unfortunately, Draco hasn't been fighting a war, he's been fighting a ghost, a memory, a cause, a man, himself, and for what? Certainly not for his father or his mum. Not for Harry. Not for the man he helped kill, or the hundreds he killed after. It was for the sake of the magic.

He forms a little cloud in the palm of his hand using the mist around him, ignoring sizzling heat and a flash sputtering by his ear—slowly this time, as if it were his life flashing before his eyes, it morphs into Pansy, then his mum, Goyle, Harry...the Hippogryph, and the first time he touched his wand.

Draco bows his head to the card, and vanishes.


End file.
